My heart goes out to Jamie Oliver. There are few tasks more onerous than trying to improve the diet of the average American. I should know. For the past two years I have been a judge on an American food reality show, Top Chef, and my wise counsel about how to tart up dishes like chicken pot roast has gone down like a cup of cold sick.

"Congratulations," emailed a friend in New York on the day of my first appearance. "After 10 minutes on Top Chef, you are once again the least popular person in the United States. Hamas is getting more favourable NY press coverage than you are."

Now, it seems, I've been toppled from my throne by Jamie Oliver. His new show, Food Revolutions, has turned him into a national hate figure. It is set in Huntingdon, West Virginia, which was recently named America's least healthy city by the Centres for Disease Control – quite a feat, considering one third of Americans are obese.

In the opening segment, we see Jamie trying to "educate" children about the dangers of eating pizza for breakfast, accompanied by bucketfuls of chocolate milk. Needless to say, they're not impressed. "We don't want to sit around eating lettuce all day," protests a local DJ. Jamie's well-meaning interventions are met with such hostility that by the end of the first episode he breaks down.

His attempt to promote Food Revolutions on the talkshow circuit hasn't helped much. He appeared on David Letterman's Late Show looking like he'd just rolled out of a bar, prompting an astonished double take from the famously well-dressed host. "I guess my first question to you would be, what, did the airline lose your luggage?" he said.

Letterman went on to ridicule his guest for imagining he could persuade a town such as Huntingdon to embrace a sophisticated European attitude to food. "In the late 60s we were going to change to the metric system," he said. "Well that didn't work, did it? Soccer? Well that didn't work, either."

His appearance on Oprah wasn't much better. "I don't think I'm Superman, however, I've got hindsight on my side," he said. This, it turned out, was a reference to the success of Jamie's Ministry of Food, of which Food Revolutions is a thinly veiled remake.

Part of his problem is that Americans don't take kindly to being reproached, particularly by one of their former colonial masters. They are quick to take offence, detecting traces of snobbery and condescension in almost any critical remark, however well intentioned. In Britain, Jamie's high-minded didacticism is softened by his cockney accent – he can get away with criticising dinner ladies because, socially, they're not a million miles apart. Not so in Huntingdon, where his accent is just thought of as "British" and he's assumed to live in a castle and have a butler. "Who made you king?" asks an angry local in the first episode.

Jamie seems baffled by this reaction, unable to grasp why he isn't as popular in America as he is in Britain. After all, he just wants to help them, yeah?

My car-crash appearances on Top Chef are not so innocent. In one recent episode, I upbraided a female judge for pronouncing "paella" as "py-ay-a". "You don't say 'Bar-the-lona' or 'Me-hi-co',' I pointed out. "So why say 'py-ay-a'?"

"Actually, Toby, I do say 'Bar-the-lona'," she said, raising herself to her full height.

The reaction in the blogosphere was instantaneous. "Toby displayed no respect for either Spanish culture or cuisine on tonight's episode," wrote a typical blogger.

Rather than play down my Britishness in the hope of making myself more acceptable, I ham it up. For instance, I said of one plate of food, in which the vegetables were much better cooked than the two meat components: "It rather reminded me of one of those Hollywood films in which classically trained British actors have been cast in character roles. The two leads were upstaged by the supporting cast."

My strategy has been to play the role of the "snarky British judge" on the show – the pantomime villain whom everyone loves to hate. Ten years ago, no Hollywood movie was complete without a British villain and today the same applies to reality shows. Whether it's Simon Cowell on American Idol or Piers Morgan on America's Got Talent, the supercilious Brit has become an essential part of the mix.

Jamie, God bless him, is too earnest to do this. He doesn't see his role as riling the American viewing public, so much as genuinely educating them about food. On Letterman, he bragged about having extracted "a billion dollars" from the British government to improve school meals. With his evangelising, puritanical streak, he's less like Terry Thomas than Thomas Becket. The irony is that, without the theatrical moustache-twirling, Jamie has turned into a much more loathed and detested villain than Cowell or Morgan will ever be.

My advice to Jamie is to embrace his status as a social pariah. Instead of toning down his criticisms of the Huntingdon lumpenproletariat, he should exaggerate them. So far, he has scrupulously avoided using the word "fat" and there are some awkward moments in the show when he casts around for the appropriate euphemism, hands gesticulating wildly. I say, give it to them with both barrels. Tell the revolting children of the town that if they continue to gorge on pizza and chocolate milk they're going to get fat.

This may sound like a risky strategy, but Americans seem to get a frisson of pleasure from seeing one of their countrymen being dressed down by a hoity-toity Englishman. It's a welcome reminder of why they threw us out back in 1776. It flatters the self-image of Americans as plucky little underdogs ready to stand up to imperialist bullies – which is preferable to seeing themselves as imperialist bullies. When I lived in New York I was constantly struck by how quick Americans were to take offence at my remarks. It was as if the War of Independence had been fought the previous week and they were only just emerging from the yoke of colonial oppression.

This is something that Jamie Oliver clearly doesn't understand. The entire country is in the grip of a massive inferiority complex. This seems at odds with America's status as the world's only superpower, but the country's success is intimately bound up with its acute status anxiety. The desire to prove themselves is where the people's extraordinary dynamism and energy comes from.

I can't help feeling that a much ruder version of Food Revolutions, in which Jamie tells the good people of Huntingdon how fat and disgusting they are, would help keep this flame alive.